Throughout the month of August, PHT will be dedicating a day to all 30 NHL clubs. Today’s team? The Tampa Bay Lightning.

If there’s something you can always give the Lightning credit for it’s having a tremendous offense. Martin St. Louis led the NHL in points last season while Steven Stamkos finished second. Sure, Sidney Crosby’s absence at the end of the season helped make that possible, but it doesn’t take away from how great those two played.

Points aside, Tampa is in flux having missed the playoffs each of the past two seasons. After a slightly tumultuous offseason, they look to regroup and compete with a new division filled with tougher opponents. Coach Jon Cooper will look internally to get the Lightning back to the postseason.

Offseason recap

The highlight of Tampa’s summer was seeing them buy out captain Vincent Lecavalier. The Lightning swallowed over $30 million to send Lecavalier away only to see him sign with the Philadelphia Flyers.

The draft saw Tampa draft Jonathan Drouin to be their next major offensive weapon but when it was time for free agency, GM Steve Yzerman stayed relatively quiet. Former Red Wings center Valtteri Filppula was their lone big signing and he should make for an adequate replacement for Lecavalier.

Tampa’s porous defense, meanwhile, was left virtually untouched or unimproved upon. For a team that finished in the bottom five in goals allowed, that’s one area that could’ve used a lot of improvement. Cooper will have to hope one of Ben Bishop or Anders Lindback can stand extra tall in goal to give them a shot at the postseason.

When you think of top coaches around the league, names like Mike Babcock, Joel Quenneville, and Claude Julien usually jump out first. 2013 Jack Adams Award winner Paul MacLean has done plenty in his first two years as a head coach to butt into the conversation.

MacLean inherited a Sens team from former coach Cory Clouston two seasons ago that had low expectations. He wound up taking them to the playoffs, nearly upsetting the No. 1 team in the East in the opening round. Not bad for a guy who spent eight years as an assistant to Mike Babcock (two in Anaheim, six in Detroit).

In a short amount of time, he’s gotten his share of recognition. MacLean missed out on the Adams Award in 2012 losing to Ken Hitchcock but won it this past season after a campaign marred by injuries at all positions. He led the Senators to the fifth spot in the East and a first-round playoff series win over Montreal.

Work like that makes him either a genius coach or a master magician. Now with realignment becoming a reality, MacLean will have to compete with his former team (Detroit) and former captain (Daniel Alfredsson) and with higher expectations as well.

If he can succeed with these new challenges to face up, it’ll be impossible to ignore him as one of the league’s best coaches.

Understand, it’s not as if negotiations with any or all of the Big Three have hit snags. Fact is, Slap Shots has been told, negotiations have yet to even begin with the franchise goaltender, the captain or the first-pair, right-side defenseman.

Sather says he will be talking with them but the question is: When? New York, the city not the team, is known for doing things fast and you’d have to think locking down three of your best players would provide that kind of motivation.

Scoping out CapGeek you can see the Rangers will have a lot of choices to make next year. They’ll also have a lot of cap space to play with and likely more when/if the cap goes up next season. Maybe Sather wants to know just how much it’ll be.

When you think of the Ottawa Senators your thoughts don’t generally turn toward who is in goal. With the current team, you’re more likely to think about Jason Spezza or Erik Karlsson. Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner would like to change your mind about that.

Last season Anderson battled injury (like most of the rest of the team) and started in just 24 of 48 games. In those games, however, he was brilliant. He put up league-leading numbers in save percentage (.941) and goals against average (1.69) while going 24-12-9 leading Ottawa to the fifth seed in the East.

Numbers like those will usually put you at the front of the list for the Vezina Trophy. It’s that sort of effort that has to make Sens coach Paul MacLean breathe easier when it comes to who to play in net. Of course, it’s not as simple as it seems as he’s also got a hot shot youngster in Lehner as his backup.

Lehner’s numbers in the AHL with Binghamton the past two seasons weren’t the kind to make you think he was a top prospect, but when he took over the backup job in Ottawa last season he took off.

Lehner went 5-3-4 in his starts last season with a .936 SV% and a 2.20 GAA. If you have that kind of action to spell your starter, you’re going to win a lot of games.

No wonder people are looking at the Senators as Cup contenders. Scoring on them might prove to be impossible.